Beauxis charged with putting the boot into All Black dominance

The selection of Lionel Beauxis at fly-half for France makes more sense than the hosts of a French World Cup playing a Welsh quarter-final, but that is not saying much. The theory runs that Beauxis the boot will pin the All Blacks back and if that does not work, Damien Traille at full-back will welly it even more. The preening favourites will then be suckered into dropping their guard and Lionel's underrated hands will polish them off. "He has a cool head and he feels no pressure," Raphael Ibanez, the captain, said of Beauxis. "He is astonishing."

And possibly astonished, too. Beauxis, at 21, has a fine pedigree but only nine caps to his name. He began the World Cup as a third-choice fly-half at best behind David Skrela and Freddy Michalak (Traille, a surprise choice at No 15, wore the 10 against New Zealand last autumn), yet his first half against Georgia on his first World Cup start last Sunday ticked the box on Bernard Laporte's team sheet in indelible ink. There was a 60-metre touch-finder and a 51-metre penalty, and 24 points by the end. The distances would be no surprise to those who knew the young Beauxis (the x is pronounced) in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

From a tender age he watched his father, Patrick – a player of third division standard or so – hoofing the ball 60 metres in his bare feet, and resolved to develop the same power and prowess. "My father put up posts in the garden when I was 12 or thereabouts," Beauxis recalled in Cardiff this week.

Coincidentally Dan Carter's dad did the same, and it is a former All Black who was an early inspiration. "The first match I saw when I was very small, I especially remember a penalty by Andrew Mehrtens," he said. "I was always kicking a ball. If there was only a flower on the field I would kick it."

Trouble was, in Beauxis's formative years, which is almost all of them to date, this was a double-edged sword. In every age group, he was picked young but almost always for his big boot. His aunt was an administrator at the Louey-Marquisat club, and steered him towards Pau where he won an Under-19 title, rather than his hometown club of Tarbes, but the frustration endured. "I want to be at a club where they teach me to play running rugby," Beauxis said in 2005.

He lived his dream in 2006, captaining France on home soil to the Under-21 World Championship title in the summer. The team manager, Emile Ntamack, that lithe former D'Artagnan of the wing, said: "The first time I picked Lionel, I told him we don't want him for his kicking game. He had a great sidestep, and he was the quickest man in the team." Stade Français paid due attention.

The swanky Paris side had all sorts of fly-half problems the season before last, when they turned for a few matches to the veteran, Alain Penaud, needing someone fit to guide a stellar back division. Beauxis signed up, and though he was behind Skrela and sometimes Juan Martin Hernandez in the pecking order, he showed his talent – in Wales, funnily enough – with a cool goal-kick to close out a Heineken Cup draw against the Ospreys in Swansea last January.

Within weeks he was in Laporte's winning Six Nations Championship squad, but here's a twist. Fabien Galthié, the former France scrum-half now coaching Stade Français, cautioned against including Beauxis for the World Cup. "Lionel is too young," Galthié told me. "He has the ability to be a great No 10 but he needs more experience to understand what is needed at a high level, in tactical appreciation and defensive organisation."

Au contraire, Fabien. There was a first Test start against Scotland in the Six Nations finale in Paris (when Skrela and Michalak were injured) but no further insight on tour in New Zealand in June as Stade were busy completing the domestic season. Yet those who follow French rugby daily – they wear furrows on their brow resembling a relief map of the Himalayas – now insist Laporte had been giving the nod and the wink about Beauxis all along.

Beauxis is a quiet fellow: his team-mates nicknamed him "Bernardo" after the mute servant character in Zorro. Australia's fly-half Steve Larkham is known as "Bernie" after the mute – well, to be precise, dead – character in Weekend at Bernie's. Otherwise the stylistic similarities are few, and the squat Beauxis looks more of a Grant Fox, another All Black of years gone by.

Michalak's outside-of-the-foot dab which made a try for Vincent Clerc against Ireland was not enough to make him a starter today. Skrela has recovered after pranging an Achilles tendon early in the tournament, to no avail. So here we are with young Lionel into the lions' den. Perhaps, as the sages say, it had been coming all along.